


After the Battle

by Deannie



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Star Wars: Rebels Spoilers, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:06:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22060768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: Dizzy from turning at every shout, Poe Dameron turned around one more time and stared into the face of a green-haired ghost.Contains spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker AND the final season of Star Wars: Rebels.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	After the Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, in my crazy little mind, if Jacen had been with the fleet, we'd've seen him in the film. Here's how he was there without us knowing at the time. Also, for a great take on this, read [For What It's Worth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22009057). Because it's awesome Jacen and family.

The high of their victory died slowly. The galaxy was suddenly at the door—people they hadn’t seen in years, people they’d never met before the battle, just… people. Everywhere. There were a lot of hugs and handshakes to be had, and Poe was reluctantly separated from Rey and Finn for the moment.

Rey. Rey, _alive_. He had no idea how it happened—they’d had zero time to talk—but when Finn’s tortured voice had whispered, “She’s gone, Poe,” over the comms on Exegol…? Well, he should have known better, right?

“POE!”

Dizzy from turning at every shout, Poe Dameron turned around one more time and stared into the face of a green-haired ghost. Tall and solid and smirking, Jacen Syndulla stood in the midst of the chaos. He was bloodied, he was bowed, but he was _alive!_

“Jacen!?” Poe cried, rushing forward to wrap his friend in a crushing hug. “Where _were_ you!?” _Why aren’t you dead?_ Though he sort of looked like he’d been close at one time. Poe pulled back from his friend and really looked at him. “Nice scar.”

Jacen fingered a long, ragged scar that ran from his left temple straight down to disappear in his neckline. He also sported a sling on his right arm that matched Poe’s, blood on a hastily wrapped bandage there, and another on his left leg. He generally looked like he’d been through a war. 

Go figure.

“Thanks,” Jacen said quietly, limping forward so that the two of them were moving toward a place to sit. “Think it’ll get me the girls?”

Poe grinned. “You’re a war hero now,” he pointed out. “Of course it’ll get you girls.”

“We’re all war heroes now,” Jacen commented quietly. 

Poe looked around at the mass of sentients. Free sentients. _Free._

And he couldn’t stop the thoroughly astonished grin from breaking out, as it had off and on all day. “Yeah,” he murmured, deep-down satisfied. “Yeah, we are.” He again stared at a man he’d mourned months ago. “What happened? I didn’t think you made it out of D’Qar?”

Jacen’s blue eyes clouded. “I didn’t,” he muttered. “I was hit when we were lining up the bombers, managed to crash on the planet… damned if I know how.” he snorted. “Mom would’ve said Dad was watching out for me.”

Poe believed it. Hadn’t today proven just how much the Jedi could actually do, dead or not? Though Jacen having a halfway decent dose of the Force himself probably didn’t hurt either.

“My radio was shot and I was…” Jacen shrugged painfully. “Also shot. Took longer than I wanted to to get to the base and scrounge together enough parts to call for help.”

“Buddy, I’m sorry,” Poe whispered, carefully gripping the man’s arm. 

“It’s done,” Jacen said. And then he smiled. Like nothing was wrong. He’d been doing it since they were kids. “Anyway, by the time I recovered enough to fly, Crait had long since happened.... And then we got the strangest call.”

Poe grinned, wondering what the hell Lando had said to get all those people here. “I’m glad you came.”

Jacen shook his head. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

“Did you steal your mom’s ship?” Among the insanity, Poe’s mind had briefly registered what he’d thought was the _Ghost_ , flying up front by the _Millennium Falcon_ , but there were just so many people, he couldn’t really be sure.

Jacen’s smile suddenly lit the fast-falling dusk. “She and Sabine are around somewhere,” he told him. His face fell again. “General Calrissian told us Leia was dead.” It was his turn to offer a hand on Poe’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know what she meant to you.”

Poe had no more tears to shed on that account. Leia Organa had lived the life she was destined and had died the death she chose. Not everyone could say that. “Thanks.”

Campfires were starting up all over, small groups of friends and strangers and fellow victors clumping together in myriad ways. Poe snagged a generator and plopped it in front of the two of them for a makeshift fire of their own, with room for others who might want to join in. _Like Finn and Rey, maybe,_ his mind offered him, hoping the two of them would find their way back to him soon.

“So, I heard Finn on the comms,” Jacen remarked hopefully, looking around and watching the chaos slow down as night fell. He’d met Finn briefly in all the insanity before Starkiller base, and taken an instant liking. For a guy who’d spent his whole life as a faceless stormtrooper, Finn made an impression fast.

“Yeah,” Poe confirmed, his grin small and thankful. “Nearly didn’t make it—luckily the _Falcon_ ’s still the fastest thing out there.”

“Don’t let Mom hear you say that,” Jacen warned him wryly. “In her mind, the _Millennium Falcon_ will never beat the _Ghost_.”

“And just who is _she_?” Rey asked playfully, coming out of the darkness, Finn reassuringly close. The ex-stormtrooper took one look at Jacen and almost knocked him over with his enthusiasm. 

Once Finn and Jacen had gone through the “Why aren’t you dead?” routine, Poe nodded to Rey. “I don’t think you two officially met after Starkiller went down. Jacen Syndulla, I’d like you to meet Rey.”

Jacen’s eyes got big and his face went quiet. “Thank you,” he whispered. “My dad…” He didn’t seem able to say more, but in the warm light of the generator, Poe could swear he saw tears in his friend’s eyes. 

“Your dad?” Finn repeated. “I thought your dad died before you were born. He was—”

“A Jedi,” Rey murmured, a tender smile on her face.

“We felt him,” Jacen breathed. “There at the end, when we were sure we were sunk. Mom and me—even Sabine.”

Rey’s smile grew. “I’m glad.”

Poe didn’t know what had happened, but it was a Force thing, clearly. There was another Force thing he wanted to know about, too.

“When you were down there,” he started after a long moment where Jacen got his composure back. “Finn told me you were dead.” 

_And how could he know that?_ Poe’s mind asked him for about the billionth time since he’d met these two. 

Rey looked at Finn and something flashed between them that raised Poe’s jealousy—also for the billionth time— and she nodded. “I was.”

Poe shook his head. “You look pretty good for dead,” he quipped. Probably completely inappropriate, but true.

“Ben Solo saved me,” she said simply.

“I thought you killed him on the Death Star,” Finn retorted. 

Rey got a far-away look in her eyes. “Kylo Ren died on the Death Star,” she murmured. 

“But how—”

“I’m sorry,” Jacen broke in, staring at Poe like this girl was clearly nuts (not that Poe was disagreeing right this moment). “Did you just say _Ben_ saved you? Ben Solo as in Kylo Ren? Sith?”

“Not Sith,” she countered, but it wasn’t cold or angry. She was totally at peace. “In the end, we faced the Emperor together. The power was too much for me. Ben sacrificed himself and brought me back.”

Poe was suddenly having a little trouble processing, and suspected Jacen was, too. They’d grown up with Ben, off and on, their parents stationed in the same places as the New Republic grew and then withered. Though Poe hadn’t been there, he and Jacen had talked after the destruction of Luke Skywalker’s school. About how Leia and Han couldn’t stay together after it. About how Luke had disappeared, heart-broken.

They’d been older than Ben by a few years, but they’d felt the way his turning had damaged the group of people that made up the New Republic’s upper echelon. Poe knew that Jacen’s mom, in particular, had mourned him and his victims. She’d both loved a Jedi in Kanan Jarrus and raised one in Jacen’s Uncle Ezra, and “Luke’s kids” as she called them, had meant a lot to her.

“Mom always said you could never underestimate a Padawan,” Jacen said finally. “She said with parents like Leia and Han, she prayed he’d find his way back to the Light eventually.”

Ben Solo had been a quiet boy, prone to anger, when Poe had gone off adventuring—getting into more trouble than the son of a diplomat had the right to. When Poe came back to the fold, Ben had already become Kylo Ren, a devastating enemy. But even with the horrors his new identity had perpetrated, when Poe was captured by him, tortured by him, his mind bent by him in angles no mind should bend, it was Ben Solo he spoke to.

“I guess he was in there after all,” he murmured. He looked up at Rey. “And he saved you.”

She smiled. “Yes.”

Poe shook his head, raising the mug of whatever hot drink Finn had brought for him—for them all, he suddenly noticed. “To Ben Solo,” he said quietly.

“To Ben Solo.”

*******

the end


End file.
